vCloud PowerCLI is an optional component that you can install during the PowerCLI installation. It provides the VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud and VMware.VimAutomation.PCloud modules with cmdlets for automating vCloud Director and vCloud Air features.

Important: As an enhancement in PowerCLI 6.0 R1, some snap-ins have been converted to modules. You should ensure your scripts check for and add the relevant snap-ins and modules as needed.

What's New in This Release

New Features

This release of vSphere PowerCLI introduces a number of new capabilities and expands on the existing cmdlets introducing cmdlets for connecting to vCloud Air and enabling hybrid management of both vCloud and on-premises environments from the same command line. This release also provides further management of the VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director products.

vSphere PowerCLI 6.0 Release 1 introduces the following new features and improvements:

Enhancements have been made to change the core distribution model of PowerCLI cmdlets. In this version some snap-ins have been converted to PowerShell modules. As part of this change, PowerCLI scripts should be adjusted, where applicable, to check for module existence instead of snap-in existence.

PowerCLI 6.0 requires the full installation of Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 or later.

PowerCLI for Tenants has now been removed as a separate downloadable installation. All cmdlets previously found in this product can be added by installing PowerCLI and selecting the vCloud Air/vCD PowerCLI optional component during the installation process.

You can now connect to and manage vCloud Air instances with the new Connect-PIServer and Get-PIDatacenter cmdlets. Existing cmdlets for managing vCloud Director can be used to work with vCloud Air where applicable.

Known Issues

VMware vSphere PowerCLI 6.0 Release 1 is known to have the following issues:

Apply-DrsRecommendationApply-DrsRecommendation runs in asynchronous mode even when called without the RunAsync parameter.

Connect-VIServer

Connect-VIServer cannot use the Kerberos network authentication protocol to connect to vCenter Server systems that are installed under a custom user account on a Windows system. Connect-VIServer uses NTLM instead.Workaround: Install and run vCenter Server under the default system account. Alternatively, you can:

Add another IP to the Windows system where vCenter Server is running.

Register a new A DNS record for the IP.

Run the setspn tool to register an SPN for the new DNS record and associate it with the vCenter Server account under which vCenter Server was installed.
For example: To register an SPN for the vc-alias.domain.com DNS and the VCAccount account, run:
setspn -A -HOST/vc-alias.domain.com Domain\VCAccount

Use the new DNS name to connect to the vCenter Server system.
For example: Run Connect-VIServer vc-alias.domain.com

When you use the User and Password parameters to authenticate with a vCenter Server 5.1 or later system, you might not be recognized as a domain user.Workaround: Pass the domain name and the user name to the User parameter.
For example: Run Connect-VIServer my.server.com -Username MyDomain\MyUserName -Password MyPassword

Copy-DatastoreItemCopy-DatastoreItem throws an error when uploading an item to the root folder of a Datastore Provider drive.

Using the Thick2GB value for the DestinationStorageFormat parameter is not supported. If you specify this value against an ESX 5.0 host, the connection to the ESX environment is lost.

Get-Cluster
You cannot specify the VM or VMHost parameters in combination with the Location and NoRecursion parameters.

Get-Datacenter
You cannot specify the VM or VMHost parameters in combination with the Location and NoRecursion parameters.

Get-HardDisk
The value of the Persistence property of the object returned by Get-HardDisk is different depending on the way the hard disk is retrieved by the cmdlet.

Get-OrgVdc
You cannot run scripts that use filtering by name by using PowerShell ISE with Windows PowerShell 4.0.Workaround: Run your scripts from the PowerShell console.

Get-ResourcePool
You cannot specify the VM parameter in combination with the Location and NoRecursion parameters.

Get-ScsiLun
When you use Get-ScsiLun to retrieve Powerpath devices, the value of their MultipathPolicy property is shown as Unknown.

Get-Template
The Location parameter of Get-Template does not accept Cluster objects.

Get-UsbDeviceGet-UsbDevice cannot obtain USB devices from snapshots.

Get-VDPortgroup
When you are connected to a vCloud Director 5.1 or later environment, you cannot use the RelatedObject parameter to retrieve a distributed port group from an organization network backed by the port group.

Get-View

If you run Get-View with the SearchRoot and ViewType parameters and specify a property path for the Property parameter, the linked view of the cmdlet output is not populated.

You cannot retrieve the vSphere PowerCLI view of the underlying port group from the vCloud Director PowerCLI view of a network pool backed by the port group.

Get-VIEvent

If a nonexisting user is specified, Get-VIEvent returns the events for all existing users.

Objects returned by Get-VIEvent contain ManagedObjectReference types that are not compatible with the Get-View cmdlet.

Get-VirtualSwitch
When you are connected to a vCloud Director 5.1 or later environment, you cannot use the RelatedObject parameter to retrieve a distributed switch from a network pool backed by the distributed switch.

Get-VirtualPortgroup
When you are connected to a vCloud Director 5.1 or later environment, you cannot use the RelatedObject parameter to retrieve a distributed port group from an organization network backed by the port group.

Get-VM
During the process of creating a template from a virtual machine, Get-VM returns both the virtual machine and template objects.

Get-VMHostProfileRequiredInput
On vCenter Server 5.0, Get-VMHostProfileRequiredInput returns a result even if you pass a hashtable with inapplicable elements.

Install-VMHostPatch

Install-VMHostPatch cannot install patches on diskless ESXi servers.

Install-VMHostPatch cannot apply VIB patches.

Workaround: Use metadata.zip patches.

Invoke-VMScript
When using Invoke-VMScript to invoke multi-line BAT and BASH scripts, the command might not run all the script lines.

New-CIVAppNetwork
You can create a vApp network by specifying inconsistent network settings. While the settings of the newly created vApp network are inconsistent, you can only modify them to restore their consistency. To configure the vApp network, run Set-CIVAppNetwork.

New-HardDiskNew-HardDisk does not prompt for confirmation when you try to create a VMDK anti-affinity rule that overwrites an existing one.

New-OrgNetwork
You cannot create new organization networks in vCloud Director 5.1 or later environments.

New-OrgVdc
To ensure backward compatibility, PowerCLI provides limited support for the StorageAllocationGB parameter on vCloud Director 5.1 environments. When you develop new scripts for vCloud Director 5.1 environments, do not use this parameter.

New-OSCustomizationSpec
You cannot add a virtual machine to a domain by using OS customization.

Set-OrgVdc
The StorageAllocationGB parameter is supported only on vCloud Director 1.5.x environments.

Set-ScsiControllerSet-ScsiController cannot set both the Type and BusSharingMode parameters at the same time when running against vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi versions 5.1 or earlier.Workaround: First run the cmdlet to set the type and then run it again to configure the bus sharing mode.

Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface
On Windows operating systems, Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface becomes non-responsive if the provided IP address conflicts with an existing IP address on the network.

Set-VMHost

When an ESX/ESXi host is registered with multiple vCenter Server systems, you cannot change the state of the disconnected host to connected.Workaround:

Run Remove-VMHost to remove the disconnected host from the vCenter Server system that it is registered with.

Run Add-VMHost to attach the host to the vCenter Server system again.

(Optional) Run Set-VMHost to restore the initial configuration of the host.

The operation authenticates you with the host and automatically changes its state to connected.

When you update the value of the VMSwapfileDatastore parameter and immediately retrieve the host information, the value of VMSwapfileDatastore might appear unchanged. If you retrieve the host information after a brief period of time, the change of the property value should be reflected.

Set-VMHostNetworkSet-VMHostNetwork cannot clear the values of the ConsoleV6Gateway and VMKernelV6Gateway properties of the input object.

Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter
If you have vMotion enabled on one VMKernel NIC and you enable it on a second NIC on the same switch by using Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter, the VMotionEnabled property of the second NIC might still report that vMotion is not enabled. This is because only one NIC can be selected for vMotion, but more than one can be candidate NICs for vMotion. To change the currently active vMotion NIC, first disable the current one and then enable the one you want.

Set-VMHostSNMP

The default value of the Set-VMHostSNMPTargetPort parameter is a random number instead of the port number.

Set-VMHostSNMP skips the value of the TargetPort parameter.

Set-VMHostSNMP fails to enable VMHostSNMP and to set the ReadOnlyCommunityString when called for the first time.

Workaround: Run the command again.

Against ESXi 5.1 or later hosts, you cannot use the Set-VMHostSNMP cmdlet to modify any trap target-related settings. Attempting to modify any of these settings with the Set-VMHostSNMP cmdlet might cause the ESXi SNMP agent to stop working properly.

Get-CIVM
When you are logged in as SysAdmin, the Get-CIVM cmdlet returns system vShield Edge virtual machines used to establish perimeter security in the NAT-routed network.

Get-CIVAppGet-CIVApp returns all virtual appliance objects in the inventory including expired ones.

Get-CIVAppTemplateGet-CIVAppTemplate returns all virtual appliance templates in the inventory including expired ones.

Inventory Provider
When run within the Inventory Provider, Get-Datacenter returns the datacenters from the default servers instead from the VIServer folder of the Inventory Provider drive.

New-SpbmRule
When you create an SPBM rule, you can specify a value for the CacheReservation property that is outside the valid range of 0 to 100. You can specify a value from 0 to 1,000,000 and divide it by 10,000 to get the value in percentage. This value in percentage is displayed in the vSphere Web Client, while the actual value that you provide is displayed in PowerCLI.

New-VAIOFilter
If you try to install a VAIO filter on a cluster, the VAIO filter might install successfully on some hosts, but fail to install on other hosts.Workaround: Use Get-VAIOFilter to check whether the same VAIO filter is already installed on the cluster. If installed, use Remove-VAIOFilter before trying to install the same VAIO filter again.

Remove-SpbmStoragePolicy
If you run Remove-SpbmStoragePolicy with an array of storage policy objects, and one of the objects does not exist, you receive a terminating error.

Set-SpbmStoragePolicy
You can assign the same name to multiple storage policies in the same environment.

Other

If you run PowerCLI with a user profile different to the user who installed PowerCLI 6.0 R1 on the machine and you try to perform an operation, you receive an error message of type Cmdlet-Name : The term 'Cmdlet-Name' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

If you apply a policy created from VASA 1.0 capabilities to a virtual machine created on a Virtual SAN datastore, the compliance status of the virtual machine is incorrectly displayed as non-compliant instead of not-applicable.

If you clone a virtual machine from a NFS datastore to a Virtual SAN datastore with a mixed storage policy that has both VASA 1.0 and Virtual SAN rule sets, the policy associated with VM Home is removed from the virtual machine.

If you create a linked clone of a virtual machine which is associated with a VASA 1.0 profile and then move the cloned virtual machine to a Virtual SAN datastore, the virtual machine's VM Home and HardDisk properties are incorrectly displayed as compliant.

If you apply a storage policy that has Virtual SAN capabilities to a HardDisk object, the SPBM compliance status of the HardDisk object changes to outOfDate.

You can modify the SPBM configuration of VirtualMachine and HardDisk objects after disabling SPBM on the cluster in which the objects are located.

Users without the Profile-driven storage update privilege can modify SPBM configuration on VirtualMachine and HardDisk objects, and can also enable or disable SPBM on Cluster objects.

You cannot create a storage policy if you do not specify a description for a tag or tag category.

You can create a storage policy by using a tag that has already been deleted from the SPBM server. When you retrieve information about the policy, the tag is shown as missing.Workaround: Use the Get-Tag cmdlet to verify that the tag you want to use exists on the SPBM server.

You can create rules by specifying a value for Virtual SAN capabilities of the type ValueType. However, PowerCLI cannot verify whether the value assigned to the capability is within the allowed range of values because the AllowedValue property is not populated.

If you are logged in to vCloud Director as a regular user or an organization administrator, you might not be able to retrieve CIView by ID for some of the cloud objects.Workaround: Pass the object to the Get-CIView cmdlet.

If you try to run a script or binary code which creates new instances of the VimClient class from the VMware.Vim.dll module, you might receive a MissingMethodException error message.Workaround: Create new instances of the VimClientImpl class instead of the VimClient class.

If you run a vCloud Director PowerCLI cmdlet that uses filtering by name when using Powershell ISE with Windows PowerShell 4.0, the search might not return any result.

The types labels in the UpdateViewData property are case-sensitive.

When running in 64-bit mode, PowerCLI cannot detect the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware vSphere PowerCLI\, which is used for determining the PowerCLI installation folder. Instead, you can use the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VMware, Inc.\VMware vSphere PowerCLI.

All VIX cmdlets support use of SSPI for Windows guest machines if the underlying vCenter Server is version 5.0. This might not be valid for users who are local, and not domain users. VIX cmdlets are Invoke-VMScript, Copy-VMGuestFile, *-VMGuestNetworkInterface, *-VMGUestRoute, and Set-HardDisk when used for guest disk resizing.

Resolved Issues

The following issues have been resolved in VMware vSphere PowerCLI 6.0 Release 1:

Get-OvfConfiguration
After you use Get-OvfConfiguration to retrieve the OVF configuration object for an OVA package, you cannot delete or move the OVA package.

Installing VMware vSphere PowerCLI

VMware provides a single installer for VMware vSphere PowerCLI.

To install VMware vSphere PowerCLI components

Download VMware vSphere PowerCLI 6.0 Release 1.

Navigate to the local folder that contains the PowerCLI installer file you downloaded and double-click the executable file.

On the Welcome page, click Next.

Accept the license agreement terms and click Next.

On the Custom Setup page, select the PowerCLI components you want to install.

(Optional) To change the default location to install VMware vSphere PowerCLI, click Change and select a different Destination Folder.

Click Next.

On the Ready to Install the Program page, click Install to proceed with the installation.